


a cave, a cathedral.

by orange_crushed



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Bunker Fic, M/M, Season/Series 09, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-08
Updated: 2013-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-28 19:39:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/995746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He does come home with you. He does. He lets you drive him five hundred miles and buy him hamburgers at every state line; he carries his bag in from the car and looks around the bunker like he is seeing it for the first time. Like it is something new and full of awe, of light and promise. A cave, a cathedral. He lets you make a fool of yourself, showing off the fixtures in the kitchen and the light switches and the showers and the room you’ve left empty, the one you won’t let anyone else take. Close to yours. He listens to everything you say.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(<i>season nine speculation, general spoilers.</i>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	a cave, a cathedral.

He does come home with you. He does. He lets you drive him five hundred miles and buy him hamburgers at every state line; he carries his bag in from the car and looks around the bunker like he is seeing it for the first time. Like it is something new and full of awe, of light and promise. A cave, a cathedral. He lets you make a fool of yourself, showing off the fixtures in the kitchen and the light switches and the showers and the room you’ve left empty, the one you won’t let anyone else take. Close to yours. He listens to everything you say. He barely comments, but he smiles. He eats the food you give him and he thanks you and at night when you go into his room and he’s awake, he lets you sit at the end of the bed and make a fool of yourself again, talking about your fears and hopes and private grief, your unsteady heart, the stupid things you thought when you were without him, all that time, while he was missing. And with your brother asleep down the hall, he kisses you. You find the courage to kiss back. He came home with you and now he lets you touch him, he pulls you closer, wraps himself around you while you promise not to let go.

And then, sometime in the night- sometime just after dawn, when your sleep’s the deepest, when you are dreaming of his hands and the way they will caress the silverware, the backs of chairs, the guns, the edges of everything you own, the borders of your world, and then _you_ \- in that hour before you wake up, he takes his bag and leaves. He walks into the woods, avoids the road. He is gone like a ghost before you even roll over and put your arm around air. Later, Sam tells you he’ll be back. Sam tells you he’s got to get his head screwed on straight.

“Yeah, well,” you say. You’re seething. You feel naked out here in the library, out of the bed: you think Sam might know what you did. But you’re not sure. You feel humiliated, tricked. Like everything you gave was taken and used for a diversion. You are not a person right now. You are raw meat, hammered flat and oozing. “He can go get his head screwed on, for all I care. If I see him again, I’m gonna knock it clean off.”

Saying _if_ instead of _when_ : it feels like a knife going through you, cleanly, straight to the other side. Like a crack in a windshield that won’t shatter.

 

* * *

 

There is a gas station outside Topeka that you’ve been to before; chasing some fucking vampire, some wendigo. Just another dump with a pump that sells Gatorade and batteries and beef jerky. You are coasting on your memories- the same smell of the hot dog roller, the same cracked linoleum- when you realize you’ve been counting change in your hand but you don’t know how much they’ve asked for. You realize the clerk hasn’t said anything at all. And when you look up, you know why. It’s him, in a polyester vest with a false nametag, with brushed hair. He looks afraid. He has your name in his mouth, but he can’t say it. You want to do so many things- you want to scream at him, you want to dive across the counter, you want to pull him over the take-a-penny and kiss him and you want to cry. But more than anything you want pain: you want it to radiate like a space heater, like the sun. You want to feel the warmth of it creep into your face. You want to tell him, _I love you_. Instead:

“Keep the change,” you say. You leave a five-dollar bill on the counter and you walk out and start the car. Sam is bitching about the gas prices; he doesn’t look up from the receipt. He doesn’t know. But before you pull away you look back one more time. You can’t help it, you are enraged and slightly sick but you are greedy for it, for him, to press him to your eyes one more time. And so that’s the last thing you see before the highway blindness bores everything out of your skull: him, him, standing in front of the doors with his hands to the glass. 

Christ. You almost go back, right then. You almost turn around. But instead you drive another hundred miles. 

 

* * *

 

An angel you meet in the next town tells you they are hunting Castiel, that they want his head on a platter. “Get in line,” you say. You are trying to make it sound light but it sounds heavy, it sinks to the bottom of your voice and clunks there like an anchor. And then the angel tells you in triumph- such lousy poker faces, angels- that he’s found him, he knows where Castiel is. That he’s going to tell others. And you gut an angel in back of the public library, with a sword you took off the last one. You wonder if he’d even thank you for that, if he’d be grateful. Or if he would be angry with you. Sad. Disappointed that you removed another means by which he might destroy himself. Well, you don’t fucking care. 

 

* * *

 

Eventually, when there is no place else for him to go, he goes to you. If you thought you were humiliated before, it is nothing compared to the moment when you realize that even this can still make you happy. That his presence, his need, eased an ache you were not conscious of. It’s shaming. You stop listening to his explanation and you leave it to Sam. You walk away. You go into your room and shut the door and sit down and put your face down in your hands. You try to regain control. Of course, he knocks on the door before you’ve regained anything.

“Dean,” he says. He takes in your posture, the storm clouds that must be gathering in your face. “Are you alright?”

“None of your business,” you say. You shut the door again. You go to bed early and wake up early the next morning. You wonder if you’ll see him going this time, if you’ll be able to wave as he passes you for once. But of course Sam tells you that he’s taken the spare room, that he was up late last night translating something, that he probably won’t be awake for a while. You go to his room and open the door and there he is, a knot of blankets in the middle of the bed, his duffel on the floor and his clothes in a pile. A human man, asleep. You close the door quietly, and it immediately stops being real. There is something you remember reading about, somewhere: a box with a cat inside, alive, or maybe the cat is already dead? Castiel isn’t there, usually. Unless you’re looking at him. He wakes up later and eats lunch with Sam while you sit in the communications room, turning a circle in an old office chair. He comes to find you and you pretend you weren’t waiting for that.

“I’ve been trying to keep them away from you,” he says, urgently, like that explains it. He’s done it already and it sounded ridiculous to you then, too. Angel logic in a man suit: the wrong thing, for the right reasons. “They’re all out for my blood.”

“I can kill angels,” you say. “Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.” He stares, surprised. Does he really not remember? You started turning heaven over together, long before he finished the job himself. “So the only thing you’re keeping away, is you.”

“I don’t want them to hurt you,” he says.

“Yeah,” you say. “You’re the only one who gets to do that.” It is only satisfying for a moment, the anguish in his face. 

“I would rather be here,” he says. That stops you. It’s something you haven’t heard before. “Don’t you know that?”

“No,” you say. Honestly. “No, I don’t.”

“I would,” he says. It’s almost a whisper. “There is nowhere I would rather be. And nowhere I deserve to be less.”

“Oh,” you say. And then: “Oh, Jesus _Christ_ , Cas, is that what this is about?” He gives you a narrow, confused stare. “What you do or don’t deserve? You think you’re punishing yourself, living in that fucking shantytown, being on the run all the time?” You take him by the shoulders, grip his shirt in your hands. “You’re punishing _me_ ,” you hiss. “You threw this away, but I’m still here, living in it. In your fucking trash heap.”

“Dean,” he says. 

“I want somebody who stays,” you tell him. “I don’t need you to protect me, I don’t need shit from you that I didn’t ask for. I just need somebody who stays.” You let him go. He doesn’t move from where he’s standing, like he grew roots in that part of the floor. You leave him there and you go for a drive and when you come back- late, well after dark- Sam is sitting in the library, glowing faintly in the light of his laptop. He tries to say something but you put your hands up, you refuse to hear it. You know he’s gone again, you know he left. You’re the one who made him leave, you’re the one who ruined it this time. You don’t have to be told. But you go to your room and your bed is not empty. He’s lying there under the blankets, eyes open, hands curled under his chin. He looks like a little turtle, like something tender and helpless. He is the most frightening, most powerful thing you have ever been close to. He’s held your heart in his hand and squeezed it, flayed it, remade it from atoms. He is an angel that once cursed God.

“I’m afraid,” he says. You sit on the edge of the bed and stroke the fabric over his shoulder, down his arms. Up again, across his back. You let your hand brush the hair back from his face, let it linger around the back of his skull for a second. He’s warm from being nested in here. He’s been waiting for you. You slide your boots off and unbuckle your jeans. You slide under the blankets and he curls against you in the spot where he belongs.

“Of what?”

“Of having this,” he says, “and ruining it.”

“Me, too.”

“Oh,” he says. He puts his face into the meat of your shoulder. “Okay.”

He is still there in the morning.

 

.


End file.
